Stone had removed the top of the box. Reaching in, he gingerly pulled something out: a curl of metal, beaten very thin. “It appears to be native copper,” he said. “There are at least half a dozen small sheets of it in here.” Moving on to the next box, he removed its lid, peered inside, then pulled out something that in the faint light looked almost like a small bayonet, brownish and badly corroded. “Looks like iron,” he said.
“If so, it’s probably meteoric iron,” Tina said, drawn back from the papypri. “And it would be the earliest known use of iron among the Egyptians by at least a few hundred years.”
But Stone had already moved on to the third box. He opened it, placed a hand inside, then removed it again. In his cupped palm he held dozens of thin filaments of beaten gold, tangled together like Christmas tinsel.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
Tina Romero stepped over to the black-edged urn. She carefully lifted it, shone her flashlight inside. “Empty,” she said. Then she raised it to her nose, took a gingerly sniff. “Odd. It smells sour, like—like vinegar.”
Stone came over, took it from her, smelled it also. “You’re right.” He handed it back.
“Bands of copper, iron spikes, filaments of gold,” Logan said. “What could this all mean?”
“I don’t know,” Stone said. “But that will answer all your questions—and more.” He pointed at the onyx-colored chest that stood in the center of the chamber. “That will be what makes all our careers—and puts me in the history books as the greatest archaeologist of all time.”
“You think …” Rush paused. “You think the crowns of Egypt are in that chest?”
“I know they are. It’s the only answer. It’s the final secret of the final chamber of Narmer’s tomb.” Stone turned to Valentino. “Frank? Have your men give me a hand with this.”
Slowly—as if possessed by a single thought—the group drew together, forming a silent ring around the ebony chest.
47
Amanda Richards walked into the forensic archaeology lab and turned on the overhead lights with a flick of her fingers. She stood in the doorway a moment, taking in the racks of instrumentation, the carefully scrubbed lab desks and work surfaces. Then she stepped over to a table in one corner. The room smelled faintly of formaldehyde and other chemical preservatives—and, more chillingly, of sulfur.
Taking a seat at the table, she plucked a folder from beneath her arm and opened it. For several minutes, she examined the sheets within: X-ray fluorescence reports, the all-important CT scans, radiographies, and a brief summary analysis by Christina Romero, all pertaining to the same subject: the mummy of King Narmer.
Closing the folder, Richards sat still a moment, going through a mental checklist. Then she stood up and began assembling the tools she would need: scalpels, archival-quality linen thread, forceps, Teflon needles, fiberglass trays, scraps of ancient flaxen bandages taken from mummified remains too badly decayed or damaged to merit forensic intervention. With her tools assembled, she walked over to the corpse locker in the adjoining wall, grasped its handle, and—gingerly—drew out the mummified remains of King Narmer.
The corpse locker was similar to the ones in the storage area, where Fenwick March had been killed during his attempt to loot Narmer’s mummy, with a single difference: this locker was equipped with an atmosphere of inert gas, nitrogen. Since March had violated the mummy so roughly, tearing the bandages and disturbing its internal microclimate, every attempt had to be made to prevent further decay or decomposition. That, in fact, was the reason Richards was here—to repair, as best she could, the damage March had caused and prepare the mummy for shipment, until a more careful and extensive restoration could be done at Porter Stone’s lab complex outside London.
She swung down the stabilizing leg from beneath the locker, fixing its end to the floor. Then, pulling on latex gloves and a surgical mask, she carefully examined the mummy. Earlier in the day, technicians had removed the compounds in the mummy’s windings that formed the ancient booby trap by exposing the mummy to a negative airflow chamber. Nevertheless, Richards handled the corpse with the utmost caution.
She continued examining the mummy, taking note of the damage to the bandaged hands, head, and—most extensively—the chest. She found herself still struggling with the idea that Fenwick March—one of the most revered archaeologists in the world—could have done something like this: not only robbing a mummy, but in such a crude, unprofessional manner. It was amazing, the deadly lure of ancient treasure. March had been studying it, handling it, all his life. Perhaps this find—the Pharaoh Narmer—had finally been too much for him. It was the straw, the golden straw, that broke the camel’s back.
She swung a UV light into place over the mummy. It might be callous to think so, but a part of her was relieved March was out of the way. He had always been a tyrannical presence in the archaeology labs, micromanaging everything and everybody, insisting things be done his way, blustering and bullying and complaining. This was the second time Amanda Richards had worked with him, and he’d been much worse this time out. Perhaps it was all of a piece with whatever mind-set had prompted him to loot the mummy. She shrugged. All she knew for sure was that—had he lived, had somebody else been the one to violate Narmer’s corpse—March would have been looking over her shoulder right now, scowling, second-guessing her every move and telling her how she was doing it all wrong.
As it was, the forensic archaeology lab was delightfully calm and silent.
She moved the UV light slowly over the mummy. Remains of mummy varnish fluoresced a pale gold under the light. Dark patches, where the technicians had stabilized the sticky glycerol with an inert compound to render it harmless, were scattered here and there throughout the upper layers of bandages, torn open by March in his feverish search for grave goods.
Richards snapped off the light and put it aside. Narmer’s chest was the most badly damaged area—she would begin her restoration work there.
Wheeling over a powerful surgical lamp, she aimed it at the chest and began examining the damage with a jeweler’s loupe. March had sliced right through the bandages, exposing numerous layers after the fashion of geologic strata. The anepigraphic scarab had been removed by March, but numerous other, smaller treasures peeped out from the layers of wrappings: beads and faience amulets and golden trinkets and the other items forming the “magic armor” that served to protect Narmer in his journey to the next world.
She shook her head, tut-tutting under her breath. March had made such a hash of the bandages covering Narmer’s chest that she would have to unwrap still more of them before she could even think of putting them back into any sort of order.
Using the forceps, she carefully pulled back the edges of the disturbed wrappings, exposing the deeper layers, tangled and somewhat shredded from the effects of Narmer’s booby trap. Putting aside the forceps and taking up the scalpel, she cut away first one, then a second wrapping, freeing them from the tangle and pulling them away. She hated to do it, but there was no other way to restore the damage. Narmer’s body had been so carefully wrapped, and March had been so hasty and reckless in tearing at those wrappings, that it was like trying to realign the rubber bands around the core of a golf ball.
Taking a fresh grip on the scalpel, she sliced through yet another layer of the linen bandages. Now Narmer’s actual flesh was exposed to the light, covered by a thin cloth and a golden chest piece, which itself had become dislodged, probably by the chemical reaction. That was not good—it might be pressing improperly against the flesh, perhaps damaging it further. She would need to reseat it upon Narmer’s chest. Then she could begin the work of sewing back the layers of bandages with linen thread, and—in places where the original wrappings had decayed or become too brittle—replacing them with her supply of ancient flax wrappings. Then she could move on to the head and the hands, where the work should go much faster. In three hours—four at the most—Narmer’s mummy would again be whole and stabilized for tra
nsfer to England.
Putting down the scalpel, she very carefully reached through the layers of cut bandages and gently grasped the edges of the golden chest piece. The surrounding tissue, she noted with approval, was in excellent condition given its great age: gray and desiccated, with no sign of deliquescence. The chest piece, however, was difficult to budge, and she was forced to apply additional pressure. Finally, it shifted, coming free of Narmer’s body with a dry snick.
Richards lifted it slightly, preparing to reseat it properly and sew the bandages over it. But then she stopped abruptly, rooted in place by surprise and shock.
With the chest piece freed from its original position, the flesh of Narmer’s chest was laid bare. And as Richards looked down at the body, she saw—in the pitiless fluorescent light of the laboratory—a wrinkled, shrunken, desiccated, and yet unmistakable female breast.
48
As the rest of the group watched in rapt silence, Stone stepped up to the large onyx chest. Valentino’s roustabouts came up to stand on either side of him. Stone hesitated briefly, then knelt before the plinth and let one latex-gloved hand brush gently across the upper surface of the chest. His shoulders trembled visibly. He pulled the gloves from his hands—Rush, Logan noted, made no protest at this—and caressed the chest once again. Despite what he’d implied about the chest holding the answer to all Narmer’s secrets, Stone seemed to be in no hurry to open it.
Standing back in the darkness, watching, Logan understood. He remembered the speech Stone had given to the assembled troops, describing his first archaeological discovery: the Native American settlement everyone else had missed. He remembered the gleam in Stone’s eye when he’d first met him, disguised as an elderly local researcher, that day in the Cairo museum when he’d said: work quickly. Over his illustrious career, Stone had uncovered almost incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Camelot. He’d recovered traces of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, whom historians had always consigned to myth. And yet in discovering the tomb of Narmer, he had outdone even himself. Logan knew that Stone held Flinders Petrie, father of modern archaeology, with a respect that bordered on reverence. And yet now Stone had accomplished what had eluded even Petrie. With the discovery of Narmer’s crown, he would take his place in the highest circle of his profession—a circle reserved for one. His detractors would be forever silenced. Stone would become, for all time, the world’s greatest archaeologist.
Silently, Stone ran his hands around the top of the chest, then along its sides, his spidery fingers moving this way and that, almost like a phrenologist analyzing a skull. “Tina,” he said at last, his voice breaking the silence, “a scalpel, please.”
Tina moved forward and handed Stone the thin, straight blade. He nodded his thanks, then gently applied the scalpel to the strips of gold that lined the chest. Logan had assumed these strips to be mere inlaid decoration; instead, they appeared to be bands of precious metal holding the chest closed by ritual seals. Having cut through them, Stone peeled the bands away from the chest, then laid them carefully aside. A single band of gold remained, holding the elaborately bejeweled serekh in place on the chest’s upper surface; another careful notch of the scalpel cut through this as well, and Stone gently placed both it and its attached serekh by the base of the plinth. Then he rose and nodded to the roustabouts. The two positioned themselves on each side of the chest. At Stone’s direction, each grasped an edge of the lid and began to lift it. Although the lid could not have been more than two inches thick, the roustabouts could barely budge it from its position; Valentino and one of the security guards came forward to lend a hand. With great effort, the four raised the lid from the chest, moved it to an uncluttered area of the tomb, and—with a chorus of grunts—laid it on the floor. It hit the black surface with a dull thud that reverberated throughout chamber three.
Inside the large onyx chest was a black cloth shot through with threads the color of gold. Stone touched it gingerly but—as before—the moment his fingers made contact, the cloth disappeared into a mist of fine dust, its corporeal form preserved five millennia only through a caprice of nature.
Below lay a sheet of beaten gold, covered with primitive hieroglyphs.
“Tina?” Stone asked, angling one of the lights toward the sheet of gold. “What do you make of these?”
Romero came forward, examined the glyphs. “They seem to refer to those papyri, laid out on the table,” she said after a moment. “I’d only begun to study them. It’s almost as if they were …”
“Were what?” Rush prompted.
“Invocations. But not of the usual type.”
“What type?” Stone said, an edge of impatience in his voice.
She shrugged. “Almost like—instructions.”
“Why is that unusual?” Stone asked. “The entire New Kingdom’s Book of the Dead could be seen as an instruction manual.”
Romero didn’t answer.
Stone turned back to the chest. Nodding for Valentino’s men to remove the sheet of beaten gold, he eagerly glanced beneath, angling the light in closer for a better look. Stepping forward, Logan could see another sheet of precious metal—this one edged with faience and precious gems, its surface dense with hieroglyphs—once again covering the entire upper surface of the chest. Stone gestured for the roustabouts to remove it as well.
“Over here, please,” Romero said. She instructed Valentino’s men to place both inserts on the floor near the table with the papyri.
With the second sheet of gold removed, a rough, uneven surface greeted their eyes. To Logan, looking down into the chest through the dim light, the chest appeared to be filled with a superfluity of small, thin, desiccated bones, all jumbled about and knotted together in a crazy quilt of disarray.
Stone grunted in surprise. He reached forward; thought better of it; donned another latex glove, and then dipped a hand into the material.
“What is all that?” Logan asked.
“I’ll be damned,” Stone replied after a minute. “It’s hemp.”
Rush leaned forward, plucked a piece from the jumble with a pair of forceps, examined it with his flashlight. “You’re right.”
Nodding to Valentino’s men, Stone began removing handfuls of the ancient plant stalks from the chest—first gingerly, then in larger and larger amounts, until it littered the floor of chamber three. As the material was disturbed, thin clouds of organic dust rose, and an odd scent—like that of a five-thousand-year-old harvest—rose to Logan’s nostrils.
Embedded within the bundles of hemp were two bags, each slightly larger than a basketball, formed from strands of gold so tightly and expertly woven that they were as pliable as silk. Gently—gently—Stone freed them from the surrounding hemp and placed them on the floor before the plinth.
Once again, without speaking, the group closed in. Logan looked at the two roundish objects gleaming in the beams of a half-dozen flashlights. In his mind’s eye, he saw within them the twin crowns of Egypt: the white, conical crown of upper Egypt, spotless and gleaming; the red crown of lower Egypt, high peaked and aggressive. What were they made of? Painted gold? Some unknown or unexpected alloy? What magic did they wield? He felt almost beside himself with eagerness to see what was inside those soft folds of woven gold. Two bundles. There was no longer any question: these were the double crowns of the first pharaoh of Egypt. What else would Narmer have guarded so jealously, so carefully, and at such great cost—not only to himself but to his legacy?
Stone appeared seized with a similar urgency. He picked up one of the golden bags, loosened its end, and—with a brief look around at the others—reached in and gently pulled out its contents.
What emerged was not a crown but something very different: a bowl-shaped implement, made apparently of white marble, trailing long gold filaments from its edge.
There was a murmur of surprise and dismay from the onlookers.
Stone frowned. He stared at the thing for a moment, uncomprehending, and then placed it aside atop its go
lden bag and—more quickly this time—thrust his hand into the second.
What he pulled out of this bag was even stranger: a construction of red enamel, topped by an iron rod that itself was surrounded by a curled sheet of copper. Logan, stunned, leaned forward, peering closely. The iron rod leading away from the enamel construction was sealed with a stopper of what appeared to be bitumen. They looked precisely like the images in the wall painting in chamber one.
These were not crowns. These could be called nothing else but—devices.
Stone stared blankly at the red-colored thing in his right hand. Then he picked up the white marble object in his left. As the group watched in silence, he looked from one, to the other, and then back again.
“What the hell?” he croaked.
49
In the rearmost of the three examination rooms of the Station’s small medical suite, Jennifer Rush moved restlessly on the bed where she’d been placed for observation. The room was dimly lit, and the lone nurse who had been monitoring her had sneaked out of the suite—Jennifer’s vitals had fallen into normal REM sleep, and the nurse was unwilling to miss a hairdressing reservation. All was still except for the low, infrequent blinking and bleating of the surrounding medical instruments.
Jennifer stirred again. She took in a deep, shuddering breath. For a moment, she fell still. And then—for the first time in more than thirty hours—her eyes fluttered open. She looked at the ceiling, her gaze vague, unfocused. Then—after another minute—she struggled to sit up.
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